‘Widow’s Bay’

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Widow’s Bay (Season 1) is a horror comedy set on the fictional New England island of Widow’s Bay. The show has similarities to Lost – it features people who are stuck on an island that appears to be a focus for supernatural forces beyond their control.

Matthew Rhys is well cast as the town’s mayor along Kate O’Flynn as his assistant. There is a charming quirkiness in the first four episodes where the comedy horror is played straight. The audience is unsure if the ‘dark forces’ are real or imagined. Then the story moves into more of a straight horror drama.

The production values, performances and writing has been excellent. The writer’s appear to have moved the dramatic climax forward, into episodes 5,6, 7, and 8, with episodes 9 and 10 settling back into something of an end of season lull.

There’s a lot going on in this season – a struggling mayor keeping the island’s tourist attractions open (very much like the mayor in Jaws), a visit to the island’s dark historical past, a Halloween meets It Follows chase episode, a variety of monsters and creepy apparitions, a drug experience episode, the theme of a father struggling to have a meaningful relationship with his son, and interactions of an eccentric group of unlikely buddies (a ‘band of heroes’) fighting for their friends and the island’s community.

It will be interesting to see where the writers take Widow’s Bay in Season 2. I can see it turning into a quirky soap opera meets Stranger Things for adults.

‘Slow Horses’

Mick Herron’s 2010 novel Slow Horses is the first novel in a twelve book series. It’s also been adapted into a successful Apple TV series. If Len Deighton’s The Ipcress File is about class, Slow Horses is about misfits surviving work politics.

Where The Office poked fun at the workplace, Slow Horses explores it with a cynical dark humour. There’s an assortment of eccentric characters, including a disheveled departmental boss who eats heart-attack food, has disgusting personal habits, and throws in the occasional politically incorrect comment.

The key to Slow Horses is the bad luck character origin story and rooting for the underdog.